Quote by Rosario Castellanos: “Language is the tool with which we build what we are.”

The words we have access to — the language we inherit, learn, or are denied — shape who we can become and what we can even imagine about ourselves. Language is not just communication; it is the material from which identity is constructed.

Castellanos was writing and speaking at Mexican universities in the early 1970s, during a period of significant indigenous rights activism following the 1968 Tlatelolco massacre. Her work consistently challenged the Mexican state's narrative of cultural unity, which often required the erasure of indigenous and women's voices.

Mexican poet, novelist, and diplomat who used literature to confront the racial and gender hierarchies of mid-twentieth-century Mexico. Her novels Balún Canán and Oficio de Tinieblas drew on indigenous Mayan experience and the violence of colonial social structures.